Evolution of the European Council

The European Union (EU) is a political economic union of 28 members. The founders are France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Italy, Netherlands, and Germany. The Maastricht treaty established the European Union in 1993. The EU aims to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services and capital and regional development. These 28 member states have successfully integrated because of their similar cultural lifestyles.

The council of ministers- This is the European Union’s main decision making body, it is composed of ministers from the National governments of each of the member states, and meets in Brussels or Luxembourg to agree legislation and policy.

The Council of Europe is a regional intergovernmental organization which promotes human rights, democracy, and in the rule of

Furthermore these democratic foundations were further “reinforced” with the conditionality’s of membership adopted at the Copenhagen Summit in June 1993, whereby democratic governance and human rights were included in its criteria for membership. Furthermore, the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 formally established a Common Foreign and Security Policy which included objectives of which included the development and consolidation of democracy. The EU as Lucarelli argues hence became a strong instrument for the promotion and development of democracy in Europe and but especially in post-communist ones. This Furthermore, the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997 reaffirmed its strong democratic position through Article 6:

The European Economic Community was an organization started in 1957 by France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and Luxembourg, in post War World II torn European. This organization was a union between the Steal and Coal Community and The European Atomic Energy Community. The goal of the organization, heavily influenced by John Monnet one of its founders and National Liberation Committee member at the time, was to build a stronger cohesive Europe through collaboration and economic ties to bring mutual prosperity. This organization and its ideals developed into the well know European Union of today, that currently sits with 28 members. However, one controversial possible membership has increased in importance over the years.

These states increased the Union’s population by 30 percent but only increased gross domestic product by four percent. The European Union has an unwieldly governing structure, the most important parts are the Commission and the European Council which make the rules and carry out executive functions. Two lesser but still important parts are the Parliament and the Court of Justice. The Commission has immense power with the domination of the Union budget and setting regulations for the member states. It is also the only permanent part of the executive

As regards to international treaties, it has the main role to decide on whether to give the Commission a mandate to negotiate, the content decision to mandate, overseeing the negotiations in a special committee, and then decide on the content to sign and conclude the agreement. However, it cannot be forgotten that the EP’s power to consent on most treaties and the Commission’s power of negotiation. The Council also has power to stop such treaties and to define the EU’s position instead of implementing them. It is clear that the Council represents the interests of the governments of the Member State on resolving issues of conflict and it plays an important role in the development of

The European Union was founded in the wake of World War II, in the hopes of promoting trade between member nations, who would be unlikely to go to war with each other. It presently consists of 28 nations, with over 500 million citizens. [1] At its governing level, the Union is split into 7 bodies, each with varying responsibilities similar to the branches of the United States government. The EU has 3 additional branches to supplement the Executive, Judicial, and two Legislative branches. There is a Central Bank, an official Auditory branch to keep the Banking branch in check, and an advisory branch to decide the policies and overall direction of the EU. The laws, policies, and treaties enacted by the EU supersede those of its individual member nations, even if they are in direct contradiction to that nation’s laws. [2] The average

The European Union is an entity that is seen nowhere else in the world. It is not a government, it is not an international organization, and it is not just an association of states. The European Union members, instead, have decided to turnover part of their sovereignty to the Union so that many decisions can be made at the institutions leadership level. This partnership includes 28 diverse democracies built together on the basis of complex treaties. Although the goals of this organization were to assist with expanding economic prosperity, peace and stability throughout its member states, the European Union has been faced with ever-pressing concerns in the recent past that are very serious and may in fact become fatal to the continued coalescing between members. These problems can be categorized into three categories; economic, social, and political.

At the Laeken European Council of December 2001, government and state leaders of the European Union (EU) Member States decided to draft a `Constitutional Treaty' for the EU. The draft would then be discussed, amended, approved or rejected by an Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) held in 2003. The aim of Fabbrini's article is thus to contribute to the understanding of the constitutional evolution of the EU through a comparison with the constitutional experience of the United States.

The roots of the European Union can be traced back to the early 1950’s when a small number of countries made a decision to join together as a way to resolve any potential conflict nurture economic growth and common values across the continent. There was a desire to promote common values and membership was opened to all European countries. Since the inception the number of members has grown from a founding six countries to what we now know as the modern day EU with a current total of 28 countries with a further 8 countries under application review. In 1992, what was then a group of twelve countries, joined together to form the Customs Community Code which was eventually introduced in January 1993. The code effectively merged the individual customs regulations in to a single customs union.

The formation of the European Union started about three-quarters of a century ago. The first blueprints of the European Union date back to 1951 for the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) (Wilkinson). This organization included the Inner Six countries of Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. The ECSC was founded by the French foreign minister, Robert Schuman, whom lead this organization with the Schuman declaration in May 1950 (Wilkinson). This organization of states inspired the formation of many similar organizations in Europe.

Due to success of the ECSC, the six member countries decided to extend their unity and as a result, two new treaties were signed in 1957. The first treaty was signed in Rome and it established the European Economic Community (EEC) aiming to form a custom economy within the countries (Wild, 2017). The second treaty was European Atomic Energy Community and it was aimed for developing nuclear energy as a corporation.

The European Union’s core foundation began in the 1950’s, when the Treaty of Rome was signed. Decades earlier, right after the Second World War, a movement was created to unite the countries of Germany and France. The EU has, for some time, been a major player in world politics and with twenty-eight member states the EU has had its fair share of complications throughout the years. Foreign policy began to take place early on as the EU was seen as a political system that was making decisions on behalf 28 countries. In the 1970s Henry Kissinger, the United States Secretary of State for President Richard Nixon and President Gerald Ford, brought up the question of “If I want to call Europe, who do I call?” This began a long and stressful debate of who is the official that needs to be called when other foreign actors and institutions want to address a problem or simply ask a question to the European Union. After many years European leaders claimed to have answered Henry Kissinger’s question by creating the European Council President and a European Foreign Minister position. But is it as simple as that? Has this question really been resolved by just creating these positions? We can see that reorganizing the Union’s political structure has strengthened the EU, it has allowed them to show foreign leaders a more united front and show that they, too, have global interests.

Formally established in 2009, the European Council is not a branch of the United Nations, but a branch of the European Union, a 28-member political and economic union based in Europe. The goal of the European Council is to define the European Union’s, or EU’s, overall political direction and priorities. It is not a legislative body of the EU and therefore does not negotiate or adopt EU laws. Alternatively, the European Council defines the EU’s policy agenda, traditionally by espousing “conclusions” during European Council meetings. These conclusions identify issues of concern and recommend actions to take in order to resolve